[Buddha-l] Beyond Hope

[jkirk]

>> jkirk schreef:
>
> The death penalty seems to me to continue the bellicosity and belief in 
> the value of aggression of those who, and the societies that, impose it. 
> But I have "given up hope" that in this country it will be ended. Even 
> working against it seems to get nowhere, much less working for peace.
>
>
>> Joanna

> for people like us who want death penalty to disappear altogether, it 
> doesn't matter much in which country it's still being carried out. > Erik

Well, yes, but I, like many others, also try to commit action on behalf of 
peace
as well as just pushing my stone endlessly up the hill. I can only do it in 
my country, where there may still be some room for human agency left over. 
Step by step........"being peace" as Thich Nhat Hanh said.

But as at present my neck of the woods (and neighbor rocky mountain states) 
is threatened by another mushroom cloud, one not offered by bin Laden, but 
by our own government bent on preparing the way for testing more nuclear 
bunker-buster bombs. So on June 2 next month they prepare to set off a 700 
ton bomb underground in Nevada (south of Idaho where I and thousands of 
others live), near the old test site, that will indeed set free tons of 
radioactive dust left behind from their 1940s nuclear bomb testing. People 
in Idaho who were recipients of radioactive fallout back in the forties have 
yet to be compensated by the government. Now this.
I cannot take any pleasure in the irony that a state like Idaho-- where a 
large majority of people are against the termination of pregnancies for 
almost any reason -- are now going to face having their unborn infants and 
live children (both of whom are more vulnerable to ionizing radiation than 
adults) subjected to this radioactive dust fallout.
Thus, I must try to do more than simply go about my business like Sisyphus.
Joanna

Joanna